


Not a Spy, Just a Caller

by jazzfic



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Background Michael Burnham/Ash Tyler, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 03:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16736028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: Sometimes people who get lost want to find a way back. Tilly wants to help.





	Not a Spy, Just a Caller

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written in years. This is a small thing, all I could manage, but it's because I kind of love these characters, Ash, Michael and Tilly especially, and it's mostly because I haven't written in so long that I'm posting it.

Unofficially, Saru knows. He’s grown enough into the captain’s role to have an eye on crew morale, and the bigger picture; enough to know that some bonds never break. And that Tilly, who’s always been crafty with her hands, has a heart big enough to forgive the world and all the wars within. Officially, his is the only voice L’Rell hears. He makes it clear that this doesn’t mean the new Chancellor is having any sort of blind pulled over her eyes. Tilly nods at every word, hands clasped behind her back. This means as little as they need make it, Saru notes, gravely. _He_ is still their friend, still part of their family, inasmuch as they can call it one. 

She just wants to help, is all.

Now she sits in her quarters, waiting. There’s a timer counting down. It takes an age she doesn’t want; she feels sick – _this is a bad idea, this is a bad idea_ – then the comms logo disappears, and... 

At first she wonders if the vid’s lost colour – on-the-sly, back channels being what they are and all that – because the room’s so _dark_. Are they... are they keeping him in a cave? A ball of hurt wells up in her chest for the imagined plight. A hot, stuffy cave, humid and rank with the breath of Kahless’ eternal followers, waiting to rip their fingers into his thin, human ski--

The picture blurs suddenly, focuses, and... oh. That’s better. Not a cave. It’s actually a reasonably sized room. Well furnished, plenty of light, and, okay, what she’d thought were manifestations of evil are just a pattern on the far wall. She hunches over, trying to get a better look. It’s quite a nice pattern now she can see it properly, intricate, bold lines interweaving like vines. Maybe a little over reliant on blood red as an accent piece, but that’s the Klingons for you. And anyway, it’s not as if Starfleet’s regulation decor is the epitome of style.

A hand intersects her view, fingers clicking. “Qo’noS to Tilly. Hello?”

“Oh! Hey! Heyy...” For some reason her vocabulary choses that moment to dump itself out the nearest airlock. She bounces a little in her seat as she tries to rein it in and beams what she hopes is a not too inane looking smile in the general direction of the screen. From the expression on Ash Tyler’s face, that hope fails.

Oh, balls. She doesn’t care. “You’re alive!” she squeaks. “Thank goodness.”

“Um, were you expecting to see a corpse after we... pre-arranged this commlink?”

He’s not smiling. Well, not exactly. It’s there but strained, wound tight at the edges. The realisation hits her that for all the seemingly readiness they’d had in setting this up, at no point did she actually ask if Ash wanted to talk to them (to them, to her, to a proxy that may or may not be Michael Burnham, whatever; she’s a vessel, a conduit to the greater purpose). As usual she’s jumped ahead, pulling the hands of two very stubborn people who are still bearing gaping, emotional wounds as wide as the quadrant that now separates them, and she expects him to – what? Bear warm, open arms in return? 

_(“We did not force the decision,” Burnham had said. They’d been in the mess, sitting with empty cups on the table, the mostly one-sided conversation having fallen into a lull. Her head was tilted away, but in the beat before she speaks Sylvia remembers how the_ I _shaped her friend’s lips, the safer_ we _replacing it. “He chose that path.”_

_“Paths cross. They’re not just straight lines, leading forever away. Sometimes people get lost. It doesn’t mean--”_

_But Burnham was looking at her, eyes at a level, guarded. In that moment, Tilly had wanted to hug her for the self-preservation that kept her shoulders upright. “I’m sorry, Michael. What I meant to say was he... that doesn’t mean he’s built a wall, too.”)_

Sometimes people who get lost want to find a way back, Tilly thinks, looking at Ash now. And sometimes they find a world that doesn’t want them.

A jangle of nerves betrays her voice as she says, more softly, “You know what I mean.”

“Tilly.” His lips tweak a little, the tightness disappearing. She’s forgotten how intuitive he can be. He’s as nervous as her, of course he is, only he’s the still and stoic type, the perfect straight-backed Starfleet security officer. _Ex-_ she corrects. They’ll beat out the job descriptors later. The fact that her mind fails to hesitate on there even being a later scuttles the last of the nerves into a corner, and she relaxes, smiling back. “It’s okay,” Ash continues. “Thank you for... reaching out.”

“How are you?” She might as well be blunt. One of them’s got to at least have a chance at staying upright in this yo-yo of a conversation. “They’re, uh, they’re treating you well?”

He actually snorts at this, then tips his head forward, a gesture so him that she has to bite her lip from laughing. He waves imaginary quote marks in the air around his words. “My ‘captors’? Well, considering I’m a volunteer prisoner, I would say that yes, they are.” 

Tilly holds her hands up. “Fine. Point taken. How’s... what shall I call you – diplomacy central? Bridge-building 101? Klingon slash Federation harbour of light in this... galaxy of darkness?”

“Wow, Tilly. Wow.” 

“Uh-huh.” She grins, teasingly. “I’ve got more where that came from.”

Ice duly smashed, the conversation creeps forward. It’s more at the pace of a sleep-addled tardigrade, but she’s well aware of the wide circle they’re walking here, by necessity, the way his eyes occasionally flick past her, the pauses she can see he wants to fill, aware that she plainly doesn’t have the answers, at least, not yet. She has the vid set to a tight shot; Michael’s bed, sheets tucked square and single pillow flat, looms large behind her. But Sylvia Tilly has her co-ordinates set, and she’s going to stick to them like a limpet, despite-- 

Oh, it’s hard. There are words she wants to throw at him, and square: _idiot, dumbass, friend. I could kick you sideways for the things you did._ She thinks of Michael trying to hide her feelings in the beginning and failing spectacularly; of the confusion, curiosity, that bright newness in her eyes when she would return from his quarters late at night, and in the darkness when Sylvia would pretend to be dead to the world, let a smile be the last thing she did before sleep.

He was scared of being found out. He was scared of himself. Maybe still is. But how, she wonders, how in that moment could he properly understand himself, or that reality, when it was surely all cut up and spliced inside of him? Is she really so naïve to want to reach out in the hope that he’s still got one hand held back, for them?

Tilly takes a long breath. She finds his eyes, holding them until the feelings swirl back into cohesion. He’s talking about Klingon syntax, some technicality or other, and she realises that she doesn’t really care what he’s saying, but that fact that she can see him, hear him, is enough. That’s step one of however many infinitesimal steps this is going to take, and the thought of this makes her want to cry for real.

She holds a hand up in apology. He tilts his head, the words trailing off. “Um, it’s almost 21:00 here,” Tilly says.

“Right.”

“We agreed twenty-five minutes...”

“Yep, yes. Sorry.” Ash runs a hand through his hair – it’s longer now, and with his beard growing out, too, the whole look is... she hasn’t mentioned it as it seems kind of trivial; hasn’t wanted to say anything in case it turns out to be a not-his-choice sort of thing. Also, there is a part of her that blushes still at drawing attention to anything appearance-wise. Ugh, whatever. Stupid self consciousness. 

Something flickers in his eyes. “You’ll call again?” It’s sincere, so openly so, she has to sit on her hand to stop from lifting it. 

“Of course. If you want me to.”

“I want you to.”

Drawing on all her acting skills, she laughs. He needs bubbly; she’ll give him bubbly. He needs _this_. “I’m really not a great spy.”

“No, you’re terrible. But you’re a pretty great friend.”

She very nearly does cry, then. Ash cuts the link, saving her from apologising for the tears she should have no apology for, or maybe, she thinks, from seeing his own.


End file.
